Wendy Elisheva Somerson

About

My clients learn to trust themselves and lead liberated lives by accessing the wisdom of their bodies.

As an activist and organizer, I have been working for the past twenty years to help shift our larger culture by organizing campaigns, workshops, and rituals. Yet I couldn’t figure out how to shift my own behavior to bring it in line with my social justice values.

I work at the intersection of healing and activism because I believe that individual and societal transformation are interdependent.

Years of talk therapy helped me gain insight into my past, but I was unable to think my way into new behavior. Activism gave me a framework to engage in meaningful political work, but activist culture often replicated unhealthy dynamics of domination in the larger world.

My therapy felt completely removed from my activism, and my therapists did not understand the narrative of my life within a political context.

When I first heard how generative somatics integrates body-based healing, political analysis, and movement work, I immediately knew this was the next step on my path. Since 2010, I have been training with generative somatics in trauma theory, bodywork, and somatic healing to help folks transform from the inside out.

I am committed to bringing effective and politically relevant embodied healing of personal and collective trauma to social justice communities.

My clients say that I create a strong container to hold them fully n their complexity and depth.

I came to Seattle for graduate school, but after earning a PhD in English with a focus on queer, feminist, and anti-racist studies, I decided that I didn’t want to continue living primarily in my head and the world of ideas. As a survivor of violence, it was much easier to be in my brain than in my body, but I felt deeply frustrated with the limits in my life. After leaving academia, I began exploring different modes of connection and expression through activism, visual art, and political writing.

Longing for ways to bring together healing and activism, I began leading rituals based in Jewish tradition and centered on the intersection of Jewish and Palestinian liberation. Helping create community rituals enabled me to experience the power and possibilities of communal healing within a political framework.

After I began doing my own healing through somatics, I began shifting my behavior to bring it more in line with my personal and social justice values.

Through somatics, I also found a model and vision for promoting healing within our communities.

I live in Seattle where I practice somatic healing with individuals, run healing groups, hang out with my kitties, organize with Jewish Voice for Peace, make visual art, and write.

Contact me to find out more or to book your free 20 minute initial consultation. You can also e-mail me at wendy(at)wendysomerson.net